of the present day to sell all that they have and give it to the poor. Another cause that profoundly altered the views of the early Christian communities must have been the catastrophe and final dispersion of the Jewish nation. Up to the time of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem under Titus, the Christians not only regarded themselves as Jews[15], but were looked upon by such of the other subjects of Rome as had happened to have heard of them, as merely one sect the more of a race always factious and given to internal dissensions. Yet even in St Paul’s time, the Christians were exposed to a bitter persecution at the hands of those orthodox Jews who seemed to the Gentile world to be their co-religionists[16], and it is probable that in the outbreak of fanaticism attending the first Jewish war, they suffered severely at the hands of both combatants[17]. The burning of the Temple must also have been a crushing blow to all who looked for a literal and immediate fulfilment of the Messianic hope, and its result was to further accentuate the difference between the Christians and the Jews[18]. Moreover, the hatred and scorn felt by these last for all other members of the human race had now been recognized by the Gentiles[19], and the repeated insurrections attempted by the Jews between the time of Titus and the final war of extermination under Hadrian showed that these feelings were shared by the Jewish communities outside Palestine[20]. It was therefore not at all the time which worldly-wise and prudent men, as many of the later Christian converts were, would choose for identifying themselves with a race which not only repudiated the relationship in the most practical way, but had lately exposed themselves on other grounds to the deserved execration of the civilized world.